Arabana Songlines, a collaborative project between Arabana Community, The Mobile Language Team (University of Adelaide) and Ku Arts funded through the Australia Council for the Arts.
Creatives and Elders from the Arabana community led this creative professional development project which supported the development and presentation of Virtual Reality vignettes. Elders were filmed as they travelled through their Country (Kati Thanda, Lake Eyre), telling ularaka (songlines), linking placenames to the land. Led by Arabana filmmaker Colleen Strangways, this project created an opportunity to document in-context linguistic and cultural elements for preservation, language revival and to share Arabana culture with the world.
Presented during Tarnanthi 2021 at The Lab, Arabana Songlines took viewers on an immersive journey through the remote heart of Arabana country, Kati Thanda (Lake Eyre). Viewers sat with Elders as they shared knowledge of kutha ‘water’, the giver of life and heard the endangered Arabana language.